Moonshine in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

Government officials destroying a moonshine still, 1900-1920

The Eugene Beck case shocked America, with articles on the case being published even in the New York Times. The primary reason for the widespread attention was Beck’s rocky relationship with alcohol and his ties to the moonshining industry. An 1885 article from the Atlanta Constitution states “As a boy around the illicit stills which dot the country he grew up with whiskey as his daily drink. As a man he was a lawbreaker who plied his vocation as a moonshiner from Anderson, South Carolina to Atlanta.”¹While Prohibition would not officially start until 1920, Temperance movements had been well underway for some time by the end of the 19th century, with organizations such as the American Temperance Union having been founded decades before the Civil War.  However, it was not until the late 1800s that Temperance took hold in America. The Temperance movement was, in large part, a representation of Progressivism as a largely upper-class effort to meet social challenges with institutional responses. Industry was also being introduced to the South in the late-19th century, bringing with it social and economic change. In Elvin Hatch’s “The Margins of Civilization: Progressives and Moonshiners in the Late 19th-century Mountain South,” he states:

  “The former subsistence way of life was being replaced by a money economy, wage labor, and company towns; egalitarianism was declining; and local politics were coming increasingly under the control of business-oriented county seats, state capitals, and outside capital…throughout much of the United States a common perception of mountain communities was that they were backward or semi-civilized places that needed saving- more precisely, civilizing.” ²

Temperance, industry, and the push for bureaucracy together provided a unique pressure that directly affected Eugene Beck both as an independent southerner and as a moonshiner.

A satirical (or perhaps not) funeral for the personification of whiskey, John Barleycorn

Prohibition in America

“‘Good-bye John, [Barleycorn]’ he said. ‘You were God’s worst enemy; you were hell’s best friend…The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into store houses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile, and the children will laugh. Hell will be forever rent.’”³ 

A car chase between the police and bootleggers ended poorly

Mountain Moonshiners

The journal article “The Margins of Civilization: Progressives and Moonshiners in the Late 19th-century Mountain South,” by Elvin Hatch examines the writings of George Atkinson, a federal agent who went after moonshiners in the South in the 1880s. Hatch expands upon the motivations behind moonshining through the skewed perspective of Atkinson. Hatch states that “...he [Atkinson] wrote that the reasons the moonshiner gave ‘for defying the law’ were that it ‘restricts his liberties as a citizen, or …his father was not required to respect such a law, or …he hates the Government under which he lives.’”⁶ Atkinson dismissed these statements as lies by a “backward” people seeking only to get rich quick, but they exemplify the increasing anxieties being brought to the surface by bureaucratic reform even in the 1880s. Atkinson’s view, too, of the Southern Appalachian people is representative of the view of the lower class by progressive Americans during this time. Hatch says that “...the patterns that he considered ‘backward’ correspond with what I am referring to as ‘traditional,’ and what he considered ‘civilized’ I am calling ‘progressive.’"⁷ Moonshine, or, the tradition of distilling whiskey on a small-scale level was not illegal before the Prohibition Era. Avoiding the federal tax on liquor, however, was, and it was those who avoided this tax that Atkinson pursued. It should be noted that the original Whiskey Tax, implemented with the help of  Alexander Hamilton in 1791, so disproportionately affected the poor farmers in the Appalachian region that it gave rise to the Whiskey Rebellion. While the Whiskey Tax was eventually repealed, new taxes would take its place during the Civil War.⁸ 

In Blumenthal’s book, she tells the story of a young moonshiner named Raymond Parks, from Dawson County, Georgia. Parks spent three months in prison at the age of fourteen where he met someone who offered to get him into the moonshining business. Parks was one of six children with a father that drank heavily. There is no doubt that his family’s poor condition played a significant part in Parks’ turn to moonshining. Parks made enough money distilling moonshine to buy a Chevrolet alongside his Model T and was then recruited by his uncle to run liquor from the Georgia Mountains down to Atlanta. Blumenthal says, “His side business netted him a profit of 30¢ a gallon, or up to $30 [about $500 in 2022] a night, at a time when a prohibition agent might make $10 or $12 a day.”⁹ p. 104] Blumenthal goes on to say:

 “By the time he was eighteen, Raymond had made enough money to buy his uncle’s service station and a farm, where he moved some brothers and sisters from a family that had grown to sixteen children. He also learned how a creative mechanic could make a car reach unheard-of speeds and how moonshine drivers could calmly navigate the most treacherous roads at stunning speeds.”¹⁰ 

Indeed, it was Raymond Parks’ experience running moonshine that led to his helping found NASCAR. Parks went on to become the first NASCAR team owner and won the first two NASCAR championships in 1948 and 1949.¹¹ 

Reactionary Violence

While Parks’ story exemplifies the cultural influence of moonshine in the Prohibition Era, his success was one of few, and moonshiners such as Eugene Beck who peddled their trade before illegal alcohol was the only source of alcohol available were far different. The Civil War, Industrialization, and the immigrants who followed caused a particular discomfort in North Georgia in the late-1800s. There was an increase in violence in the area, and the Ku Klux Klan operated as a vigilante force, “protecting” the sanctity of southern values (racism) and womens’ virtues.The liqour taxes imposed during the Civil War further increased the agitation felt by farmers in North Georgia: 

“For mountain people such laws were a matter of economic importance since the money they derived from home brewing represented a vital part of their income…they believed the taxes were designed to benefit large commercial distillers by driving home brewers out of business…they resented the federal government restricting a practice that they had engaged in for generations. Convinced that they had the right to dispose of their crops as they saw fit, they did not consider home brewing a criminal act. The home brewer who did not pay his taxes became a moonshiner and, in the eyes of federal authorities, an outlaw.”¹² 

The Ku Klux Klan began to attack revenue collectors such as George Atkinson and those who supported them. Much of the violence that happened in North Georgia during this time took place between moonshiners and revenue collectors. Moonshiners lived on edge, distrustful of any and all people who might have supported the collectors. Several organizations were formed between moonshiners such as the Distillers Union and the Working Men’s Friend and Protective Organization. While the organizations mentioned in “Moonshining and Collective Violence” are confined to the central part of North Georgia, it is not a stretch to say that some could have very well been established in Rabun County.¹³